


resplendent

by spacegirlkj



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 10:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13480023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegirlkj/pseuds/spacegirlkj
Summary: Yachi moves to a new town. What she finds is much more magical than expected.





	resplendent

**Author's Note:**

> this was my piece for the kiyoyachi zine! it was my favourite project to be apart of and im so happy with the outcome of this. i hope you enjoy~

Yachi moved to the town of Torino for two reasons. The first was a job application in the  niche field of courtroom sketches, and the second was the ridiculously cheap housing. She worried, as she usually does, that the previous owner of her quaint apartment may have died for rent to be this low. She checked under all of the faucets and found none of them leaking, checked the floors and saw no blood nor bleach stains, and figured that she should be at least a little bit safe. So she moved in, took the job, and tried to settle down into her new life with the bare minimum amount of neuroticism she usually exerts. 

  
That was two months ago. Now, Yachi has found out that a recent arts college graduate working as a courtroom sketch artist was _not_ the job she expected, notably when her supervisor, a balding man named Sawyer Lawyer, handed her back her sketch with the note _could use a little more surrealism._ Yachi has dabbled in surrealist art before, but nothing could prepare her for that. Nothing could prepare her for figuring out that housing is cheap because the grocery stores are not stores but odd markets in what seem like empty _Costco_ buildings, where food products she has never heard of cost more than they feasibly should. 

  
Surreal was a good word for it. Her tap has started oozing something deep and scarlet, and her apartment is always dark by four o'clock, none of the lights appearing to work.   
So, two months is what it takes for Yachi to accept that she has stumbled into something much bigger and stranger than she expected. She takes her sketch book full of drawings of criminals in informal clothes and lawyers who apparently like fine art to the nearest coffee shop, orders a latte, and tries to relax into the stool. Dumping her pencils onto the bar much like a kid would do with crayons, she continues a base sketch of a criminal with four coats on. Surreal, just like the slight tremor to her hands and the people by the fireplace with floating cups.

  
And then _she_ walks in.   
She is a woman with inky black hair that matches her inky black nails and her lace dress, black with black tights and black mary-janes tied with black laces, black umbrella on her arm. She smiles and her black painted lips curve as she sits daintily down next to Yachi, ordering in a gentle, breezy voice a chai latte with no frog breath, drums her fingers on the table, and waits. Yachi stares at her hands, thin and spindly, with a multitude of black rings. 

  
"Hello?" the gentle voice says, and Yachi flings her good charcoal pencil behind the counter in surprise, an embarrassing noise escaping her lips. She looks up the face the woman who has just spoken as both their drinks arrive, and realizes she has been staring. 

  
"Ah, um, hi," Yachi sputters. She's most definitely blushing, flitting her eyes between the most beautiful person she has ever seen and the coffee with a green hue.   


"I haven't met you before, are you new?" the woman asks. Yachi doesn't trust herself to say anything but  _ you're the most fantastically gorgeous person I've ever met and I think I'm having a fever dream, _ so she just nods frantically and takes a sip of her coffee. It tastes strongly of something fishy, and she uses every muscle in her bodily control not to fling it behind the counter alongside the pencil. 

  
"I'm Shimizu Kiyoko," the woman says. "Are you okay? You're getting pale."

  
Yachi then blushes, because the concern in beautiful Kiyoko's voice is enough to revive colour to her face. "I'm okay!" she squeaks. "Yachi Hitoka. I'm— yes. That's me. I sketch courtrooms."

  
Kiyoko blinks behind her elegant frames, and leans over to look at Yachi's book. Her fingers trace over the faces of the jury, which Yachi had depicted as fish in order to be more unique, and smiles. 

  
"Courtroom sketch artistry is a hard trade, what with drawing the future and all," Kiyoko tells her oh-so nonchalantly, as if divination was town politics, as if this is what strangers talk about over coffee, and _this_ is where Yachi flops her head into her hands and _breaks._

  
"I'm sorry, but I just moved here and there's something green in my coffee and you're beautiful and also dressed for a funeral in the best way, and I think I'm cursed because my apartment is oozing, and I am so very, very confused and tired." She inhales sharply, and continues. "I really want to make friends but I'm nervous and food is too expensive to pay for here and the last time I talked to someone they asked me if I knew any hexes and I am _not_ a witch and just want to know a little more about what is going on."

  
Kiyoko stares at her, slightly shocked, but mostly kind, and hands Yachi her drink. "You don't have magic?" she asks.

  
"Is-is that what this is?" Yachi stammers. The tea is surprisingly good for an establishment that puts something green in their coffee.

  
Kiyoko— beautiful, strange, goth-looking Kiyoko— extends her hand. “Come on,” she urges. “I'll explain everything.”

—

Torino turns out to be just a small, odd town, with a high population of sorcerers and a dense concentration of magic. Kiyoko brings her to a little park where the trees are perfectly normal and are turning in brilliant shades of scarlet and explains that she is a necromancer, likes crows, and is in charge of making sure that ghosts don't haunt public property. She is also some sort of medium, Yachi learns after a particularly nice afternoon where Kiyoko insists on calling her Hitoka and they step on leaves that crunch nicely underfoot. Kiyoko relays to her a message from the dead leaves, which translates only into poetry that seems reminiscent of Shakespeare or other fifteenth century literary greats. 

Two months quickly turn to six and Yachi begins to understand how magic works. Her apartment  _ was _ cursed, but all it took to get the lights to work in the evenings and her sink to stop oozing was a shakily read counter-hex from a book she rented from the local library. It reads like Latin poetry and stumbles awkwardly off of her tongue, but when she tells Kiyoko she’s fixed it she earns a brilliant smile and a squeezing chest. 

Kiyoko is magic, all by herself. Yachi follows her through graveyards and listens to her when she speaks in hushed tones, telling stories of the graves they pass. She stops at certain headstones and murmurs, dances her fingers in the air and summons swirling clouds of inky magic that twirl and spin like ribbons. It’s all Yachi can do to watch in wonder, to gawk and admire the ghostly figures that rise in the shadows of the night and sit atop their tombs, smiling to Kiyoko as if she were an old friend. 

Yachi thinks of Kiyoko’s Mona Lisa smile and thinks of her laughter and thinks of the furrow of her brows as she reads. Familiarity surrounds her wherever she goes, makes the nerves that course through Yachi still. When Kiyoko isn’t looking, the trees sigh. When Kiyoko closes her eyes, the ghosts hold their breaths. 

—

There’s still so much for Yachi to learn. She wants a lot of things— wants to buy a pack of tarot cards, wants to enchant them herself, wants to afford all the farm fresh fruits and vegetables sold at the market. And secretly, when she lies awake at night listening to the poltergeist in her apartment’s pipes, she imagines tracing her nails down Kiyoko’s back. There would be beauty marks, moles, divots at her hips— but would she smile? Would she hum and hold Yachi tight? The pipes groan loudly, and Yachi brushes her fingertips to her lips. She really needs to give Kiyoko a call. 

—

Daydreams are frequent in court. Charcoal sketches of crimes yet to be committed or crimes that happened thirty years ago become common place, and despite not understanding her job, Yachi loves it. Tonight, she lies in the town park, avoiding a sorceress who tranfigures stones into apples, and opens her sketchbook to a new page. She hasn’t quite mastered any spells yet, but a part of her thinks her artwork might be enchanting enough to be called magic.  The big oak tree and its knotted bark come to life across the page, and Yachi sketches apples instead of acorns, sketches the ravens gliding above because it feels  _ right _ . The clouds above float lazily by, blown by a northeast breeze that carries them like leaves down a stream, and birds sing perfect fourths in jovial harmonies from atop the trees. Yachi’s shoulders unfurl the tension they were once holding, and she closes her eyes for half a second to enjoy the peace.

“Hitoka,” a voice calls. In a second, Yachi both melts and jumps out of her skin. Kiyoko comes from behind and kneels down beside her, smoothing out the creases of a maroon coloured skirt as she settles in the grass. A smile spreads across Yachi’s face, her drawing hand shaking involuntarily as Kiyoko rests her head on Yachi’s shoulder. The touch is so simple, should just  _ be _ simple, but instead makes the blood rush to her cheeks. She’s always been sensitive to touch, but everything about Kiyoko seems to be tree trillion times more electric. Vanilla and honey wafts down through the air, the scent of Kiyoko’s shampoo intoxicating when she’s this close. 

“You’re trembling,” Kiyoko points out, voice a whisper above the wind. “Are you cold?”

In the beat it takes for Yachi to start worrying, Kiyoko has lit a flame. The flame is blue, flickers and casts a blue-green glow over the hollows of her cheeks, making her eyes seem wider, gleaming, sparkling, shining. Heart squeezing, Yachi reaches her fingertips closer to Kiyoko’s, so close to the fire, even closer to the burn of longing and syncopated breathes. 

Yachi’s heart speeds up again—  _ tha thump, tha thump, tha thump. _ It pulses heavy in her ears and pulls her breath short, and if Yachi wasn’t so enraptured with everything Kiyoko does, she’d guess the spell placed on her was some kind of curse. Yachi knows well enough that isn’t the case, because when Kiyoko looks up at her with a shimmer in her sapphire eyes, everything freezes, even the trees.

“I think I love you,” slips from Yachi’s lips. In that moment, she prays the fire will engulf her mouth and burn it shut, keep her from talking. “I keep asking myself if this is real, if we’re real— I wonder if there’s some kind of spell on me keeping this dream alive.”

Unspoken:  _ I wonder if you fed me a truth serum in my sleep, because my feelings are falling like the lotuses that rain from the sky when I don’t pay my bills. I worry that if I leave you’ll cease to exist, but I don’t think I’ll ever leave because you’re all I ever think about, and this town makes me feel more at home than normalcy ever did, and— _

“Hitoka,” Kiyoko hums. The blue flame creeps up her palm to burn at her wrist, keeping Yachi’s skin from burning as Kiyoko rests her knuckles on her cheek. “You aren’t dreaming.”

And Yachi tastes salt before she tastes Kiyoko, before she tastes the cherry chapstick on Kiyoko’s lips. The flame still burns blue, brighter now, fueled by the way Yachi falls into Kiyoko’s arms. Yachi thinks  _ everything happens for a reason,  _ thinks  _ this must be real _ , thinks  _ I believe in magic and girls who can speak to the dead _ , and then thinks of nothing but  _ Kiyoko, Kiyoko, Kiyoko.  _

When they pull apart, it’s only a centimetre that separates them. Yachi rests her forehead onto Kiyoko’s, breathes in the flicker, breathes in the flame, breathes in the magic and the resplendence of Kiyoko’s breath. In that moment, everything is real, everything is there. 

“I love you,” Kiyoko says, voice clear, voice strong. The flame flickers out, and Yachi can’t help but smile. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr and twitter at spacegaykj !


End file.
